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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsKremlin Cash Behind Billionaires Twitter and Facebook Investments
Leaked files show that a state-controlled bank in Moscow helped to fuel Yuri Milners ascent in Silicon Valley, where the Russia investigation has put tech companies under scrutiny.
In fall 2010, the Russian billionaire investor Yuri Milner took the stage for a Q. and A. at a technology conference in San Francisco. Mr. Milner, whose holdings have included major stakes in Facebook and Twitter, is known for expounding on everything from the future of social media to the frontiers of space travel. But when someone asked a question that had swirled around his Silicon Valley ascent who were his investors? he did not answer, turning repeatedly to the moderator with a look of incomprehension.
Now, leaked documents examined by The New York Times offer a partial answer: Behind Mr. Milners investments in Facebook and Twitter were hundreds of millions of dollars from the Kremlin.
Obscured by a maze of offshore shell companies, the Twitter investment was backed by VTB, a Russian state-controlled bank often used for politically strategic deals.
And a big investor in Mr. Milners Facebook deal received financing from Gazprom Investholding, another government-controlled financial institution, according to the documents. They include a cache of records from the Bermuda law firm Appleby that were obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and reviewed by The Times in collaboration with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/05/world/yuri-milner-facebook-twitter-russia.html?_r=0
Clarity2
(1,009 posts)to the russian investor money back facebook & twitter took years ago? I can't remember the year, nothing except this news comes up in google. I think it was a half billion to facebook and can't remember the amt to twitter.
Suspiciously I tweeted about it many times on twitter, and very few results come up in twitter search about twitter/Russia investment money. It's like they're suppressing it in search results.
I just went into advanced twitter search using my own ID, and I can't even find my own tweets on the subject.
HAB911
(8,891 posts)hard to keep up with it all
my brain hurts. I'm at my limit of tmi and can't retain any more info/facts in my head. lol
Clarity2
(1,009 posts)It was DST Global: https://www.irishtimes.com/business/media-and-marketing/russian-invests-400m-in-twitter-1.588384
And it was twitter that got almost half billion.
HAB911
(8,891 posts)lindysalsagal
(20,686 posts)I know we all love free-unregulated internets, but, rico laws were put in place so those with bad intentions cannot masqerade as small-business while actually owning the airwaves and other industries.
Internet freedom is an illusion when foreign governments are running them for their own purposes.
L. Coyote
(51,129 posts)RandomAccess
(5,210 posts)wanting to come here.